


Drift

by freezeveganpolice



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freezeveganpolice/pseuds/freezeveganpolice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy prays to whatever God he can bring himself to believe in that he won’t ever have to let this brilliant woman into his mind, only to wonder if, perhaps, in all their years together, he already has.</p>
<p>Roy/Riza set in a Pacific Rim AU. Because if your OTP isn't drift compatible...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

“Mustang.”

It is not a voice he recognizes, so Roy doesn’t look away from his work, engaged completely in his welding. The skeleton of the coastal wall is nearly complete in this sector; he won’t be needed here much longer. He’ll have to move on and search for work elsewhere. Even further north, perhaps, where as far as he knows they haven’t even started construction of the wall.

“Colonel Mustang.”

At this, Roy freezes. He hasn’t been referred to by any military rank for nearly three years. He extinguishes his welding torch and flips up his mask, twisting on the metal beam to see who is calling him.

It’s a kid, maybe seventeen, eighteen at the oldest, and not one that he recognizes, not that Roy has had too much contact with children since his own childhood. Roy can barely make him out from his perch high on the wall, only the smallness of his body and the startling blonde of his hair. Here on the northeastern border of Xing, pressed against the ocean, Roy rarely sees hair any color other than black.

The kid’s not from around here.

“Mind coming down for a minute?” the kid calls up to him, and Roy nods once before he begins to work his way down the steel scaffolding.

On reaching the ground, he finds the kid is not nearly as small as he looked from up on the wall. He stands almost level with Roy, only a few inches shy of Roy’s impressive stature, although Roy is sure he’s not wrong about his age - there isn’t even a hint of facial hair on his babyish face and there is a strange happy-go-luckiness to his smirk despite the hardness of his strange, golden eyes. Roy has never seen eyes such a color. “Edward Elric,” says the kid as he cheerfully extends one hand.

Roy doesn’t respond - clearly the kid knows who he is - but does take his hand, clasping it firmly without shaking it. He’s heard the kid’s name, too, though not for several years. He remembers the news flashes, the film clips of the Elric brothers’ Jaeger malfunction after a particularly heroic battle against a troublesome kaiju, Category Three back when Category Three was a serious problem. It’s no wonder, Roy thinks, the boy looks like he’s seen so much.

After Edward releases his hand and says nothing, Roy realizes it’s his turn to speak. “What do you want?”

The kid squirms a little and then says, “I’ve been sent to offer you a job.”

“I have a job,” Roy points out, folding his arms and leaning back against the lower part of the wall, already encased in thick stone brick.

“Sure, but... how much longer can this last?” Edward asks, with another oddly carefree smirks.

“Longer than a kaiju, hopefully,” Roy says, patting the wall with mock affection.

Edward says nothing, just eyes him exasperatedly.

“What’s the job?” Roy asks.

“Pilot again,” Edward says, point-blank.

“No,” Roy replies flatly. He can still feel the overwhelming pain in his chest - no, Hughes’s chest - along with the strange sinking feeling that is dying, can still hear the sound of Hughes’s coughing, taste the blood in Hughes’s mouth. And the feeling of having half his greater mind ripped away, silenced forever - that is not something he will ever forget, nor is it something he ever wants to experience again.

Edward nods and shoves his hands into the pockets of his flaming red trenchcoat. He says nothing for a long while, then looks up past Roy at the towering wall behind him. “The coastal wall,” he sighs appreciatively. “Do you really think it’ll hold up?”

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t,” Roy says disinterestedly. “You have my answer. Can I return to my work now?”

“If you can call it work,” Edward snorts. “You’re a war hero, Colonel. Are you really happy up on this giant rabbit-proof fence?” When Roy says nothing, only glares back at him with darkened eyes, Edward tilts his head back and smiles serenely. “Wouldn’t you rather be back on the battlefield? Wouldn’t you rather be in a Jaeger again?” Roy wonders vaguely why the military would send this child to try and convince him to return. He clearly has little to no training in argumentation

“The Jaeger program was decommissioned,” Roy reminds him. “That was only a few days ago.”

“So aren’t you curious?” Edward tries then. “If the program’s been decommissioned, aren’t you curious as to why I’m here?”  
Roy pauses once again. It’s an interesting tactic, trying to lure him out back into the fray simply with incomplete but fully attainable knowledge. He considers telling the kid to leave, that curiosity killed the cat and he sure as hell wouldn’t want to be the next cat on a long list of dead ex-soldiers killed by massive monsters from the deep.

“Don’t you want to kick some kaiju ass, at least one more time?” Edward asks then, and Roy sets his jaw and tries to ignore the instinctive clenching of his fists, crossed against his ribs. Because he does, damn he does want to lay into one of those creatures, to tear one apart and eviscerate its remains, to turn a kaiju into as unrecoverable a mess as Hughes was.

He pushes off the wall and walks past Edward toward the nearby lodge. Edward’s slightly uneven, heavy footsteps follow him hurriedly, and as Roy pulls the heavy black coat off the wall, he turns to look over his shoulder at the kid, notes the slight limp as he makes up for a significantly heavier leg that he clearly still isn’t used to. Roy doesn’t mention Edward’s automail, though, at least for the time being, and instead says, “Good luck finding me someone who’s drift compatible.”

“Honestly, Colonel,” Edward says with a light laugh, “I don’t think we’ll need that much luck at all.”

Hardly four hours later, they sit together in a cramped military helicopter, Edward stretching out his metal leg, Roy watching stoically out the window as the grey, unfinished wall fades beneath the Xingese mists.

“You’re not going to ask about the automail?” Edward says, and Roy casts him a weary look. “It’s usually everyone’s first question.”

“It’s not too hard to figure out,” Roy tells him. “It was all over the news when it happened.”

“The news didn’t tell the full story.”

“Does it ever?”

“I walked the last five miles on my own,” Edward says, and Roy looks up at him sharply. “Al was functionally dead.”

“So you...”

“Piloted solo, yeah.” There is a brief silence, and then Edward adds, “Like you.”

Roy doesn’t want to think about it, because unlike with his time in the Ishvalan War, he cannot numb himself to the severity and excruciating pain of piloting a half-destroyed Jaeger, designed to be run by two brains, back to land on his own with parts of his copilot’s mutilated body clinging to the insides of the cockpit. He’ll have to face it soon enough, though. Now is as good a time to start as any. “Five miles, huh?” he says, and Ed nods. “How old were you then, like... fifteen?”

“Sixteen.”

“Who even let you in a Jaeger?” Roy asks before he can stop himself. “Wasn’t your brother even younger than you?” From what he remembers of the news updates, the Elric brothers were “child prodigies,” though it was never specified in just what area they were so prodigal.

“He’s only a year younger than me,” Edward says in answer. His use of the present tense is not lost on Roy, but he doesn’t ask anything further. “Our father was testing new drift technology, and used us as a prototype. Turned out we had an unusually high drift compatibility level, and with the hard martial arts training we received as children, we were ideal candidates for Jaeger piloting.”

“I bet the military loved that,” Roy snorts.

“They were just glad not to lose any more of their high-ranking officers to the program,” Ed laughs. “Our being in the program meant they got to keep at least two more foot soldiers.”

“And they can always use more foot soldiers,” Roy says, and lets the familiar numbness that accompanies thoughts of Ishval wash over him.

It was a pointless use of foot soldiers. A massacre, he realizes, an absolutely unnecessary massacre. Different men dealt with it differently, and the only woman he can really say he knew... Well, she took it almost exactly the same way he did, albeit with a little more open compassion.

Riza Hawkeye. He has schooled his mind away from thinking about her, or anyone else he once knew in the military, since Maes’s death. Now, though, as he prepares to reenter the military world, he wonders where she is, how she’s doing, if she’s still on duty. If she still lives in Amestris or if, like Roy, she’s relocated to a neighboring nation. If she stayed inland, away from the kaiju threat, or if she marched straight into battle as she had in Ishval.

 

It is not a long ride to the Jaeger base. Edward and Roy don’t speak for the remainder of the journey, although Roy is not sure if this is because they have nothing more to say or because they have too much to discuss and too little time in which to discuss it. Roy is accustomed to silence, but Ed seems glad once the helicopter begins to descend, sending up a cloud of dust as it lands at the edge of a large concrete expanse lined with army planes and helicopters identical to the one they’re in now.

Ed jokingly salutes their pilot and hops out the side of the helicopter, landing easily on his good leg and stepping, almost perfectly on-balance, onto his metal one, clearly more comfortable on it in warmer weather than the frigid conditions of the north.

Without hurrying, Roy follows Ed toward a massive warehouse at the opposite edge of the tarmac, the wind from the still-grinding helicopter whipping at his unkempt hair. A tall, broad-shouldered man, his left eye covered by a clean black eyepatch, strides confidently toward them from the gaping maw of the open warehouse door. Roy recognizes him immediately from news segments, and remembers with mild distaste that he’d been set to meet this man almost three years ago. Their meeting had been postponed then, though, after “the tragedy,” as the news had called it then, and soon it had been cancelled altogether. Roy doesn’t feel any remorse over this, nor does he really feel anything at all.

He doesn’t have to wonder why the man is here to greet them now. His face has been all over the news for the past few weeks, arguing nonstop to keep the Jaeger program active. “General Bradley,” Roy says, instinctually standing at military attention.

“Colonel Mustang. So glad you could join us,” Bradley says cordially. “I’m very pleased with your participation.”

Roy says nothing, just follows his senior officer - god, he hasn’t thought in those terms in a long time - into the warehouse. Ed walks at his side, hands in his pockets, gazing absently around at the masses of metal and mechanical bits and pieces that fill the warehouse. Salvaged bits of destroyed Jaegers lie in a pile in one corner: Roy recognizes the remains of Fu Lightning and Breaker Havoc, but is glad to see no sign of the pieces of his and Hughes’s Dawn Stryker that survived that fatal contact with the world’s first Category Three.

They stop at a set of gargantuan steel doors. General Bradley walks calmly to a keypad at the side, swipes an identification card through it, and then comes to stand in front of Roy and Ed once more, hands clasped behind his back, so laidback that Roy half expects him to start whistling. The doors slowly grind open, and the general leads the way into a second warehouse, where Roy has to bite his tongue to keep from gasping aloud.

Four Jaegers stand in the warehouse, one in each corner, swarming with mechanics clad in the color of their nation. Roy takes them all in at once: the deep red, working only one of the available Jaegers, is Xing; olive green is Drachma, though the Drachmans are spread between the four Jaegers, so Roy doubts any of their pilots are Drachman; navy blue is the all-too-familiar color of the Amestrian military. Roy recognizes the largest Jaeger immediately, and can’t help but chuckle. “Old Armstrongs are still kicking, huh?” he says, and General Bradley smiles.

“Longest running in the business,” he says.

Beside Roy, Ed kicks a stray bolt out of the way with his automail leg, adding yet another ringing metal sound to the cacophony of mechanical noise in the warehouse.

“And...” Roy trails off as his eyes land on another of the Amestrian Jaegers. “Steel Soul?” He turns abruptly to Ed. “You can’t seriously be piloting again. Your brother-”

“I’m not piloting unless I have to. Relax,” Ed says, holding up his hands apologetically. “As much as I’d like to, Al really can’t handle it.”

Roy does not recognize either the remaining Amestrian or the Xingese Jaeger, however. The Amestrian at least he can assume will soon belong to him and whoever his drift partner is, but the Xingese looks brand new, as if it’s never seen combat. “Emperor Immortal,” he reads off its arm, and raises one eyebrow. “Rather pretentious, isn’t it?”

“Matches its pilots,” Ed says tiredly. “One of them, at least.”

“Speaking of pilots, Colonel,” says General Bradley, “I’d like you to see your prospective drift partners. This way, please.”

Roy notes that General Bradley did not say “meet,” and wonders just who they’ve dredged up from his past.

He doesn’t have long to wonder, as he follows the general into a small meeting room and finds half his old battalion - the half that wasn’t sucked into the Jaeger program at the same time he and Hughes were, he reminds himself - standing in line to face him, along with a few other familiar faces from his old days as a dog of the military.

Kain Fuery, still baby-faced and innocent-looking, although Roy knows he’s seen truly terrible things. Vato Falman, still as hardened and outwardly calm as ever. No Jean Havoc or Heymans Breda, but Roy knew that already; the scrapped remains of Breaker Havoc are reminder enough of their deaths. Rebecca Catalina, a curious choice given that Roy has only ever interacted with her briefly. Lieutenant General Raven, another interesting choice given that he and Roy were once competing for a coveted position. At the very end of the lineup stands Riza Hawkeye, her hair pulled up as effortlessly and securely as it always was in their days of the military, although Roy can remember a time when they were younger when her hair was as short as his is now.

None of them react to his presence at first, but then Fuery breaks into a smile and, beaming, calls, “Colonel!” down the line to him.

Roy walks the line, shaking hands with each of them in turn regardless of how well he knows them, until finally he comes to Riza.

“Lieutenant,” he says as he meets her eyes and clasps her hand firmly, marveling at the unexpected texture of her hands: well-muscled with what he knows to be excellent reflexes, but surprisingly smooth. He brushes away the observation almost immediately. After all, what business does he have thinking about Lieutenant Hawkeye’s hands?

“Sir,” she says, cool as ever, and Roy prays to whatever God he can bring himself to believe in that he won’t ever have to let this brilliant woman into his mind, only to wonder if, perhaps, in all their years together, he has already.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Three-two,” Riza says, “sir.” Roy closes his eyes. He knows it’s over. Not that he’s lost the fight, because that is by no means true. That their bright young surveyor has seen all she needed to see.
> 
> Roy/Riza set in a Pacific Rim AU. Because if your OTP isn't drift compatible...

The whole group stays strangely formal that whole first day, until they all pile into one large mess hall connected to the warehouse for the dinner. Again, Fuery is the first to break, and immediately starts asking everyone how they’ve been, what they’ve been doing since they saw each other last. Notably, he does not directly mention the war, and Roy is careful not to do so either. Not everyone is as capable of dulling the memories of taking human life as he and Hawkeye. He is reminded of this especially as he spots Major Armstrong seated, along with his ice queen of a sister, at the opposite end of the mess hall.

It isn’t long before the major joins the reunion, embracing Roy in a lung-crushing bear hug and demanding to know how he’s been.

Nobody asks if he’s okay.

They don’t have to. They know.

Roy talks, as he’s expected to, answers questions, asks some of his own, excuses himself once he’s finished eating and makes his way to his room. It is simple, furnished with nothing but a cot, a lamp, and a small desk.

Just like in the military academy, he thinks wryly to himself, and begins to unpack his suitcase, which sits, freshly delivered by whoever was in charge of unloading the helicopter, next to the bed. “Something to say, Lieutenant?” he says, and Riza shifts in the doorway, one corner of her mouth lifted in spite of itself. She’d been nearly silent as she followed him, but he’d known she was there regardless, as he often had when they were at war together. He’d always been able to locate her sniping position, even when it had been kept secret from hand-to-hand combat soldiers like him. 

“You’re still gone,” she says, and he straightens up so that he can turn and look at her. She’s leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, hair down loose over her shoulders, dressed in the same high-necked black shirt he often saw her wearing when they were barely more than kids, running around Central HQ working for promotions in the Amestrian military. 

Before the first kaiju appeared and devastated the Xingese coast. Before anyone had even dreamed of a Jaeger. 

They’d thought, when they were younger, that the war in Ishval would be the worst thing they’d ever witness. Little had they known.

“Gone?” he echoes.

“You’re not your old self,” she clarifies. “It still plagues you.” She doesn’t have to say what it is. 

“You’ve never drifted, have you, Lieutenant?” he asks her then.

“I’ve gone through all the simulations.”

“All due respect, Lieutenant, but it’s not the same.” His hands twitch involuntarily at his sides, and he tucks them discreetly into his pockets, though he’s sure that none of this was lost on Riza, once called the Hawk’s Eye for her acute vision. “This is nothing like what we did in the war.”

“I’m well aware of that, sir,” she says.

“I’d advise you to get out while you still can, but I’m guessing you’d just ignore it,” Roy sighs.

“You would be correct, sir.”

He massages the bridge of his nose. “I’d order you to leave now, but I don’t have that kind of authority anymore.”

“No, you don’t, sir,” she says, and he can see the silent amusement dancing in her eyes. He struggles to find some adequate way to express to her what it feels like to lose a drift partner, that if she drifts with him, she, too, will feel the ghost of Maes’s presence constantly because they’ll have shared a mind, but he comes up with nothing. Unexpectedly, she speaks first. “At least let us run the compatibility trials,” she suggests, her voice softer than usual, less rife with military formality. “You never know. Being able to drift with someone else could help.”

They watch each other for a moment longer, and then she bows her head respectfully and backs out of the doorway.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Colonel,” she says, and then she is gone. 

The following morning, Roy wakes to a sharp rapping at his door. He answers quickly, blinking the sleep from his eyes, and finds himself face to face with a perky young blonde with a clipboard in one hand and a wrench in the other. Streaks of grease smudge her exposed forearms and her white tank top, and Roy can see oil stains on her deep blue military-issue work pants. “Roy Mustang?” she asks cheerily, and he nods. “It’s time for your compatibility trials.”

He dresses quickly, foregoing his usual formal attire in favor of an old white t-shirt and his own pair of loose work pants. He’s been through the trials before. He knows what’s ahead, and he certainly knows what’s first.

Roy is not the first to arrive in the combat arena, but, as he scans the available faces, he also notes that he is not the last. Lieutenant Hawkeye is there already, of course, as are Falman and Raven. Catalina and Fuery are missing still, but Roy can already hear footsteps echoing behind him, and soon enough Fuery has joined the lineup. 

Rebecca Catalina darts in last, silent as a cat, her wild hair hastily pulled up in a messy ponytail. Again, Roy wonders how exactly she ended up here, but pays it no matter. Any number of surprises could come out of the combat portion of compatibility testing. 

“Colonel, I believe you know the drill,” General Raven invites him, and Roy smirks and holds out one hand, beckoning the general out to the floor with a disinterested twitch of his fingers.

The two men face each other, the elder tense and the younger completely relaxed, hands now at his sides, muscles flexed but not in any proper fighting stance. Raven lunges, and Roy practically snickers. It’s almost too easy - he can read the old man like a book. In seconds, he lays him flat, flipping him onto his back with a heavy thud. He can hear the air leave Raven’s lungs. “One-zero,” the blonde with the clipboard says, though she doesn’t note anything down. Roy wonders absent-mindedly, as his opponent rises to his feet once again, if the girl even has a pen, or if she’s just intending to hurl her wrench at whosoever should pass the test. 

Two more bouts with General Raven have the old man gasping for breath with narrowed eyes, and Roy barely containing his satisfaction. He would have won that contest for promotion, he knows now. It’s a small prize, in this post-promotion world where the highest award a man can get is the blessed ability to live inland, unaware of the devastation in the sea, but Roy is willing to take anything at this point. Hughes would have been proud, he thinks. He would have laughed about this and offered to buy me a drink in celebration.

If Hughes were here, though, he thinks more somberly, and his smirk fades, we wouldn’t be having this fight in the first place. 

He is less casual in his stance when it comes to Fuery, who volunteers to go next. This is a matter of personal respect more than anything; he’s well aware that Fuery can’t take him in a fight. Roy is gentle with him - he knows Fuery’s focus has always been on communication rather than on actual fighting - but still knocks him down three times in a row. He isn’t about to fake his way into being seen as drift-compatible with Fuery. “Three-zero,” the blonde announces, and Fuery dips his chin once, solemnly, in understanding, and backs off the side.

Falman starts forward, but then Riza lays a hand on his chest and steps ahead of him. Rebecca Catalina, leaned casually against the wall, raises one eyebrow but says nothing as Riza steps onto the floor. Her step is light but not delicate, never delicate - there is readable strength to her movement, and he can practically see the muscles in her calves working as she settles into a combative stance, catlike and ready to spring.  
He has no way to tell when she’ll come at him, and when she does, she’s so lightning fast, so precise, that she almost lands a hit on him. He blocks her, but only barely, and lands a kick to her ribs, pulled at the last moment so as not to seriously injure her. The pair back off for a moment, and when Riza does not move, Roy takes the lead. She predicts his movements easily, dodges his fist, and clips him on the side of the neck with one swift chop.

“One-one,” says the girl with the clipboard, and Roy and Riza settle into their separate sides once again. Riza lunges first this time, after a brief lull, only milliseconds before Roy makes his own move. She catches him off guard, hitting him with a reigned-in roundhouse kick. “Two-one,” says the girl, and before she even finishes her words, Roy comes at Riza once again, fists flying, but she blocks him. They spar for a few moments, but then he gets the better of her with a low kick, and taps her lightly on the collarbone. “Two-two.”

“Please,” says Catalina, “they’re both holding back.” She grins broadly and cups one hand around her mouth. “Give him hell, Riza!”

“Fight like you mean it,” Falman mutters.

The pair face each other again, and Roy tries to remember if there was ever a time when they fought each other in the academy. He can’t think of one, and he doubts he would have forgotten such an instance. Riza’s fighting style is memorable, so clean and fierce, but, despite its almost academic structure, completely unpredictable. Even now she jumps toward him, practically dancing, she’s so light and birdlike on her feet, and throws a full-blown punch at him. He blocks, aims a kick of his own. She leaps out of the way and, when he advances on her again, aiming higher this time, she drops to the ground and rolls out of the way. It takes him only a fraction of a second to register that she’s rolling toward him, intending to grab his leg, so he sidesteps out of her way and prepares to catch her and counter her.

She sees him switch direction, though, and catches him by the ankle with one extended arm in any case, whipping him down onto the floor and hastily pinning him down by the chest with one knee. “Three-two,” she says, “sir.”

Roy closes his eyes. He knows it’s over.

Not that he’s lost the fight, because that is by no means true. That their bright young surveyor has seen all she needed to see.

Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye are drift compatible, and everyone in the room can see it. 

“Colonel, could you and the Lieutenant follow me, please?” the girl with the clipboard asks. Falman and Catalina, yet to have their chance, say nothing. They know as well as everyone else that they won’t be able to best Riza Hawkeye’s dazzling performance. 

Riza lets Roy up and steps politely to the side, hands clasped formally behind her back, and waits for him to get up and follow the blonde girl out into the hallway before she moves any further.

“Have you got a name, mystery mechanic?” Roy asks the girl ahead of them, and she turns around briefly, walking backwards in front of them like a tourguide.

“I’m Winry Rockbell,” she says cheerily. “I designed the Elric brothers’ Jaeger, and I helped with the construction of your new Jaeger.”

“You built Steel Soul?” Riza echoes aloud. Roy finds it hard to believe himself. The girl can’t be any older than Ed, and the Elrics’ Jaeger had to have been built at least two years ago.

“Designed it, yes,” Winry says. “I didn’t build it all on my own.”

“How old were you?” Roy asks.

“Sixteen,” she admits, and shoots them both a playful wink, “but don’t tell Marcoh that. He hates to be reminded of how much better at science the little girls are.”

“Dr. Marcoh is here?” Roy breathes. Yet another face he hasn’t seen since the Ishvalan Civil War.

“Yeah, working to improve the drift tech,” Winry says as she turns around to face the steel door leading into the Jaeger warehouse Roy passed through on the first day. 

“Of course he is,” Roy sighs with a small smile, shaking his head. “He never could resist a challenge, could he?” He glances sideways at Riza, who only twitches up one side of her mouth and nods.

The steel doors grind open, and Winry leads them forward, straight to the unfamiliar Amestrian Jaeger that Roy spotted on his way in the day before. “Raptor Inferno,” Winry proclaims proudly, stopping next to it and leaning back slightly so she can look the Jaeger all the way up and down. It is painted navy for the most part, with accents in a matte copper, and its outlandish name emblazoned on its left arm in silver-white paint. 

“Another of yours?” Roy asks, and Winry shakes her head.

“I helped with a couple of the features, but the design itself isn’t mine. It’s mostly my grandmother’s work, with some help from the usual military guys,” she explains. “Do you want to test it out now? Everything’s set up for a drift trial. The tech’s prepped and everything.”

Roy gazes apprehensively up at the Jaeger, but nods his affirmation nonetheless. Riza, beside him, also gives her assent, and Winry, smiling with what looks almost like an apology on her face, leads them to a scissor lift at Raptor Inferno’s side. “Let me just radio General Bradley and tell him you’re ready,” she says, and taps the side of her jaw. Roy blinks once and looks away; he can’t believe he didn’t notice that she was wearing an earpiece. The tech has certainly gotten better since the last time he was in a Jaeger. He wonders if the actual design of the inside of the robot will be any different, but even as the thought occurs to him, the lift starts upward, and soon he finds himself in the Jaeger’s cockpit. It is almost identical to the interior of Dawn Stryker, though the windshield is tinted a deep amber instead of pale yellow, and there are a few features built into the side walls that he does not recognize. 

“She’s beautiful,” Riza says.

“Brand new, too,” Winry grins, “so don’t go breaking her till you’re out there beating up monsters from the deep, alright?” She gestures to a stand on a lift adjacent to the one they rode up. “Your suits are over there. We had all your potential drift partners fitted for them, just in case, but yours, Lieutenant, should be close to the front.” Riza says nothing, only lifts one eyebrow, and Winry winks back at her. “We had a hunch.”

Roy and Riza walk in matched stride out of old military habit more than anything, don their pilot suits side by side, and, unblinking, head back inside. Roy wonders if Riza’s silence is fear now, or just her usual stoicism. He knows for certain that his silence is fear, or something akin to it; nerves, perhaps, or a fear of something coming up in the drift that he doesn’t want to remember, let alone share with the woman next to him. 

Winry follows them into the cockpit, briefs them - almost entirely for Riza’s benefit, so Roy thinks - and then scurries out and back onto the scissor lift. There is silence for almost a minute. Roy presumes this is so Winry and any other mechanics or pilots in the warehouse can get to a safe distance should anything go awry.

“Sir,” Riza says, unexpectedly, and Roy looks over at her. “I’m very sorry for what I’m about to do.”

Roy says nothing, only furrows his brow slightly.

“You’ve always been a very private person, sir. With the things that mattered, anyway,” Riza continues. “I’m sorry for this.”

“You can’t apologize for drifting, Lieutenant,” Roy says, and tries weakly to laugh it off, but the sound that comes out sounds much more like the wheeze of a dying rodent, so he plays it off as a clearing of his throat. He struggles to find some other words to share with her, to prepare her for what the drift is actually like, but comes up with nothing.

He is very grateful for the overhead speaker that comes on next, loudly announcing: “Drift trial preparations complete. Drift will commence in 10… 9…”

The suits click into their respective places, Riza on the left and Roy on the right.

“8… 7…”

The Jaeger boots attach to the pilots’ calves. Roy marvels at the familiarity of it all, the feeling of metal and plastic and glass conforming to his body.

“6… 5… 4…” 

The gloves, too, latch onto Roy and Riza’s forearms, and they both assume a defensive stance, left arm ahead of right.

“3… 2…”

The visors of their helmets come alight with facts and figures.

“1… Commencing drift…”

The speaker goes silent, and then comes the familiar pinch at the back of the neck, the sensation of almost-endless falling, the rush of wind and color, the strange feeling of being just under the surface of a vast expanse of water.

Then come the images, snapshots and snippets of the lives and memories of the two pilots and the shade of Maes that accompanies Roy everywhere he goes. Roy, age fifteen, practicing martial arts with avid determination in a flat, grassy area behind an old wooden two-story house. Riza, twenty-two, receiving her first sniping assignment in the Ishvalan war. A faded, unclear memory of Maes throwing and catching his two-year-old daughter, accompanied by the hollow ghost of laughter. 

Riza, nine years old, laughing and running with a kite outside the same old wooden house.

Roy, twenty, at the bedside of a dying man.

Riza, eighteen, solemn and dry-eyed at a funeral in the rain, her hair cut short. 

Flashes from the war. Bombs. Gunshots. Shouting. Roy feels Riza’s trigger under his fingers.

Flashes from the kaiju conflict. Massive waves. The primal scream of a Category Two. Riza can taste Roy’s blood in her mouth as he bites his tongue in response to the sudden appearance of one of the first beasts he ever fought.

Flames. So many flames. Roy’s hands ghosting over Riza’s exposed back, a whispered apology. Neither of them is sure whose memory of that event this is, and even as they both struggle to piece that out, the drift settles, and they see as one, act as one, become fully aware of their joint metal body. 

They stay in place, aim one solid punch at the air with their right hand. There is no need to speak; their thoughts are cohesive, solid, almost tangible.

They rearrange the structure of the Jaeger’s arms, explore its weapons and features.

The left arm is equipped with a laser cannon, sharp and accurate. They do not fire it. They know better than to set one of those off inside.

The right arm is something different entirely. They are unsure of its purpose. They worry about using that inside, but a flower of curiosity blooms in the back of Roy’s - or is it Riza’s? - mind and refuses to wilt, so they rev the right arm’s weapon and aim it toward the scrap warehouse next door.

“That’s enough,” the voice comes over the speaker again. “Trial complete. You’ve passed.”

There is a brief static sound as someone else scrabbles to get the microphone, and then a high-pitched female voice comes on. For a moment, they think it might be Winry, but quickly they register that this is someone else, someone even younger. “That was awesome!” she cries. “But please don’t use the flamethrower indoors.”

“Flamethrower,” Roy mutters, as they pull out of the drift and back into reality, separate their thoughts and compartmentalize their personalities, work to become different people once again. “Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I took a while to update! I'm working on a lot of different stuff right now (a webcomic, mainly) and I'm headed back to college very soon, so I'm pretty busy. I'm glad you guys enjoy it, though! And for those who are curious about Al, you'll find out soon enough.


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